DAP Christmas Day Message By DAP Secretary-General And MP For Bagan Lim Guan Eng On 24.12.2018

Malaysia’s economic growth can only prosper by moving away from policies devoted to racial or religious hostility and command economies, to those that chase investments, focus on economic welfare, promote private enterprise and talent diversity.

Economic growth can only be sustained if the country remains united together.

The new Pakatan Harapan Federal government under the leadership of internationally acknowledged statesman Tun Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad is committed towards representing all Malaysians regardless of demography or geography. At present Pakatan Harapan is the only political coalition that can represent Malaysians from all races, religions and backgrounds whether they are from Perlis, Johor, Sabah or Sarawak.

By showing they are either corrupt or completely incompetent in managing the economy until they cannot afford to pay the salaries of their civil servants, opposition parties have struggled. To stay relevant, opposition parties have abandoned the political centre and adopted a racist line or extremist position based on religion. Not only do non-Muslims and non-Malays not be given the right to serve as Ministers, but their rights enshrined in the Federal Constitution will be further undermined and diminished to the extent that Christmas celebrations is unacceptable.

DAP urges all Malaysians to unite and reject such racists and religious extremists by upholding the Federal Constitution. Should these racists and religious extremists succeed, Malaysia would face not just ruin and deprivation, but our children’s future would also be destroyed. We can only succeed by working together to be stronger together.

Let us focus on uniting all Malaysians together to grow Malaysia into a strong economy that can be shared by all. By maintaining our credit ratings, international financial institutions have expressed full confidence in the new Federal government’s ability in reviving the economy damaged by the RM1 trillion debt caused by the 1MDB financial scandal.

Our challenge is to improve the economic welfare of the rakyat, especially the lower-income groups in the B40. The clean government and CAT administration of competency, accountability and transparency has enabled some savings of RM1.6 billion at the end of the year, which has been shared with civil servants, rubber tappers and small-holders, FELDA settlers and parents earning less than RM3,000/-. Let us do more next year together.